Ma Rainey's Monologue Project Due: 11/28 B or 11/29 A

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom: Character Monologue

 I have placed templates for the monologues, the handout below, and a template for your CHARACTER MAPS in DRIVE

Please Remember to use the templates I've provided. They'll make life easier for this work and for those in the future. THANKS!!!

Assignment: Submit to Turnitin.com:  11/28 B or 11/29 A (300 points – 200 project, 100 test)

1.       Choose one character from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Levee, Ma, Cutler, or Toledo) and create a dramatic monologue/soliloquy from only/mostly that character’s lines that capture h/her values, desires, life experience, and loss. The piece may be poetry, prose, and/or something in between and should be at least one page typed and formatted. To help you, refer to the “questions for consideration” on the Blog.

2.       At the end and on a separate typed page please compose a 1^st person two paragraph reflection/analysis of your monologue. Please explain your process for selecting particular lines and how they reflect the character traits you wanted to capture. Similarly, how do these lines and this character speak to the central idea of the play: that the interaction between African American and dominant white culture in America not only damages African Americans, but leaves them with scars that often influence the other aspects (if not all aspects) of their lives? Or, how do these lines and this character represent (like the blues) the African American experience in America?

Just as August Wilson used the blues to establish rhythms and patterns of speech in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, try to think of this monologue as a blues variation. To this end and if you choose, you may record your monologue as a video with or without music, with or without images, or perform the piece in class with or without music. For an extra credit grade category of your choice (except semester exam). If you choose to video/record please share your project to the appropriate DRIVE folder

Please remember, you are student writers and performers in a public space and as such should not take the same liberties with language (profanity) that Wilson takes to heighten readers’ senses or denote a hierarchy.  Similarly, as Dr. Lundeana Thomas documented, “raced” words are intimate, cultural, sacred expressions that denote an exclusivity of ownership.  They do not belong to those outside of the culture and are to be respected and left alone.